Summertime (Frerard)

44: I'll Know It's You And That It's Over So I Won't Even Try

"Gerard, what the fuck's going on? I- I just... gunshots- it was all gunshots and nothing, and silence, and then I'm here, and I'm not dead, and you're not dead, and neither of us are dead, and I was pretty sure we were both going to be dead, and I didn't plan for this, I..... You shot yourself, Gerard, and I shouldn't have let you go up there, and-"

"I did no such thing, Frankie." He met my eyes at that, pulling his eyes off the road in a manner that made me certain that if we hadn't died already, we were certainly right en route to such a tragic outcome. "I wouldn't leave you for anything, I promise, okay? I took you with me here, as well, of course I did. I could never leave you behind, Frankie."

"Where is here? What's going on? If you didn't shoot yourself then what happened? Where's Mikey, where's your mum?" I choked the words out like I choked on cigarette smoke, and he drove one handed, and I tried not to think about the inevitability of a car crash like this, and I swear Gerard told me that he'd never even driven before, and I didn't even know whose car this was, because it certainly wasn't his.

And suddenly perhaps the possibility that I was dreaming, and that I was in fact dead, would be preferred to whatever hell I had been dragged into right now, because he seemed in an awful lack of a hurry to slow down, let alone stop, and even explanations seemed right out the window here.

"Bert happened - all over again, and I knew it was going to happen. He followed us, Frankie, he followed us home and I didn't want to alarm you - there was nothing we could do there. I just needed to get to my bedroom and my gun, and he's dead now, and it's fine-"

"You killed him?" I screeched out, and Gerard didn't even look at me, but I saw him scowl in the front mirror, and I considered apologising, but I never got the chance to.

"I shot at him, yes, but it was the bullet that killed him, and he shot at me first, after all, but he missed, he missed, Frankie. I'm not dead! We're both alive, isn't that wonderful?"

"The third gunshot." I spoke as a demand, looking at the man I found myself barely knowing anymore in the front mirror like he was nothing more than a stranger, and this was nothing more than a nightmare, because it felt like it.

"Mikey." He offered as an explanation, his words growing shallow all at once, and I couldn't bear to hear the rest. "I needed to leave, and he wouldn't let me - he tried to rationalise what I had just done, but I'd shot a man, and he had a gang, and I needed to run. I'm not stupid, Frankie, so I shot- I didn't shoot him, just near him... scared him, he'll be fine, but I needed to get away, and I carried you out of the kitchen where you'd passed out and I took this - it's Bert car, and I got the hang of driving pretty quickly, it's fine, don't worry, we'll be fine, we just need to get far away, and everything will all be fine, I promise."

"Gerard!" I screamed at him, catching all too much of his attention at once. "But we won't, because this will never work, and you.... you haven't taken your medication, have you? You're fucked up, Gerard, you know that. This could have all just been self-defence and then this would have all been fine, you'd get police protection, and... we'd all be fine, or even fucking better, you could have never agreed to meet him in the first place!"

And Gerard was silent, until he began swearing to himself, and I wondered just how we'd continue from here, because we couldn't, from here on, we really couldn't, and I think we both knew that, but admitting such a thing was much harder than you would imagine.

"Tell me I'm fucked up, why don't you, Frankie? You fucking talk in your sleep, you know that, and those weren't exactly sweet dreams, so go on, call me a fuck up, again, or do you want to talk, asshole? Because you seem to know everything about me, and I know nothing about you."

"Gerard-" I begged, my voice strung with cracks and breaks and a nervous disposition, bringing through an unstoppable urge to push everything I knew aside and down a bottle of vodka. "Please, just not now, please."

"Don't call me fucked up, then. You can go back to sleep and stop pretending I exist, whatever, I'll wake you up when we stop, and you can get out and get back to living in that shithole, but don't expect that you'll be safe, because they'll come after you too - you're safest with me, even as crazy as that sounds, because you don't know what it's like with that kind of life: you're innocent, you're lucky, and I want things to stay that way. Obviously, they can't, but this is the best alternative, please."

And silence fell once again, but with no gunshot to bring things back to life, and perhaps we could live like the living dead, never quite alive, and never quite alive, because we'd messed up, truly, once and for all.

Hey guys:) I hope you 'enjoyed' this chapter, and just think that at least I didn't kill off Gerard before you send me death threats;) Anyway if you liked it, then I'd really appreciate your comments and votes, and I love you all<3